Edge has been a frequently used term that has been coined by many IT analysts and experts over the last 18 months, but as Carpentier conceded many in the IT ecosystem have been guilty of misleading customers when it comes to the edge, but he disclosed what his definition of the edge is.
“Edge is essentially the place in which you consume IT. It could be a retail store, a football stadium, or a workplace, so basically anywhere in which you can consume IT and it is what we at Aruba call the edge. Prior to the onset of the global pandemic, we seen a huge wave of digital transformation, but it is important to note that at this stage digital transformation was being pursued by early adopters,” said Carpentier.
Early adopters according to the dynamic Aruba executive were enterprises that were forced to embrace change due to the disruption that occurred to their traditional business models.
“When I say early adopter, what I mean is that this is a customer that was very exposed by disruptions, and a good illustration of this is in the retail space. We all have witnessed the impact of Amazon on e-commerce, and as a direct result of the pandemic many retailers were forced to move online and completely transform their traditional experience offering in-store, and combine their physical store and their business online, and this demand is why we embarked upon so many new projects globally with retailers looking to transform,” said Carpentier.
In addition to this, Carpentier was also on hand to highlight the other major industry verticals where Aruba leveraged their technical expertise and knowledge to empower entities from those sectors on their digital transformation journeys.
“Hospitality was another sector that needed to transform. We know from our experiences that one of the first things we do when we check-in to a hotel is log-in to the Wi-Fi. The first experience you have with the hotel is in terms of connectivity. In education, we’re seeing a huge demand for better connectivity solutions that improve the connection and interaction between educators and students,” said Carpentier.
However, what ultimately differentiates Aruba when it comes to their solution offering is their new edge-services platform, which they created prior to the pandemic.
“One other key industrial vertical that was forced to transform was of course the healthcare sector. They were really exposed during the pandemic, and when they were restructuring their systems and processes’ they were forced to use more and more IoT devices to optimize their productivity and efficiency around healthcare. However, the first stage of any digital transformation is to connect users with the cloud, or the IT in general. Customers understand that resisting digitalization ultimately puts their businesses at risk. We have legacy than Cisco because we started later, which is an advantage, but when you are close to the users you need mobility and security, and that is why we introduced a solution called ESP (Edge-Service-Platform), which is a combination of connectivity devices and a management platform on top of it – and this has helped us provide automation over the security and the user experience, so we use a lot of AI to help our customers manage their overall IT environments and we are empowering them to achieve the digital transformation that they need to thrive in the digital economy,” said Carpentier.
